Microsoft will officially launch Win10 21H2 in the second half of this year. In addition to some functional improvements as usual, UI and interaction will also become a major highlight of this adjustment. As the two operating systems with the highest market share at present, Win10 and macOS related topics have lasted forever, and they have been compared all day long. Objectively speaking, despite the numerous claims from the outside world, it is undeniable that in years of “competition”, the boundary between the two operating systems has become more and more blurred, and many functions are based on you and me. have you. But the difference between Win10 and macOS interface interaction is still very huge objectively. The interaction of Win10 has been complained for many years, so what is the difference in interaction between it and macOS? I believe this article can answer your doubts.
1. UI design style
The issue of UI design style has long been a cliché. If Microsoft before Win7 can barely tie with macOS, then the next few years will basically be the era when Microsoft dropped. I believe everyone has heard about the chaos of the Win10 UI, let alone the simplest icons. Can you imagine that in the same screen, there will be three groups of icons with different appearances? Even these three sets of icons are of different styles? For Win10, the sense of tearing may be the best summary of the UI of this operating system. Various icons of different shapes, windows of various styles, interfaces of Modern and Win32 coexist… Win10 looks perfect but far from perfect. The most frightening thing is that Microsoft also split these “beautifications” into several small updates, with a little update each time, and an update once a year. It is this series of “crappy” operations that give Win10 more opportunities to be complained, and it also made the next door Apple by the way.
UI design with strong “tearing” in Win10
The pinnacle of Microsoft’s design should be Windows Vista in 2005, and the famous frosted glass special effects started from that version. At that time, Apple still looked a little bit “soil”, and there was not much glaring in the UI. But the development of things will always exceed people’s imagination. Although macOS also has an aesthetically tiring side, its design is unified and integrated, which lays a good foundation for subsequent development. At the same time, Apple’s designs are generally cool, which often triggers many small manufacturers to imitate. For example, the famous Fliqlo (imitating macOS screensaver) and Wox (imitating Spotlight search), both imitate a certain function in the Apple system, and the market response is generally good.
macOS has a perfectly integrated UI style
2. Touch interaction
As early as the Win8 era, Microsoft keenly perceives that the future will be a touch screen era, so Win8 is responsible for enlightenment and Win10 is responsible for advancing. However, after several years, the legendary multi-terminal integration did not appear. Instead, we saw that Microsoft broke its arm again and again, leaving only Win10 lingering there. The experience of Win10 with touch screen is still not good.
Promotional image of Win10 when it first came out
In contrast to macOS, its multi-terminal integration of interactive transformation is much more thorough. One of the most obvious examples is a variety of huge icons, and a list of full-screen apps that look exactly like the mobile phone OS. These designs not only meet the different needs of keyboard and mouse users and touch screen users, but also greatly reduce the difference between the desktop system and the mobile phone system, so that users at both ends can quickly get started.
The full-screen App list is the biggest difference between macOS and Win10
Speaking of this, it is natural to mention the Mac’s touchpad gestures. Although macOS does not support touch screens, the touchpad is very, very easy to use, and even the mouse has become a soy sauce in macOS. Although Win10 has been enriching its touchpad operations, it is always a supporting role compared with its mouse.
Mac touchpad is recognized as the best touchpad
In addition, macOS does not seem to give up the research and development of touch screen interaction design, we can get a glimpse from iPadOS. Recently, the new interactive design of iPadOS is eye-catching. It takes into account the precision of the mouse and the high efficiency of touch. Many people think that this is the optimal solution for compatible mouse and touch screen. Will macOS introduce this interactive mechanism? We can expect this.
3. Night mode
There is no way to determine when the night mode is popular. But Win10’s night mode is still a waste, but it is an indisputable fact. There are many problems with Win10’s night mode. As a new feature, the night mode was originally tailored to the shape of Modern UI. However, due to the unsound ecosystem of Win10 itself and the mixed reality of Modern UI and Win32, the actual value of this feature has been greatly reduced. One of the most obvious examples is that the resource manager after the night mode is turned on, not only does not have any eye protection effect, but it is more dazzling than before.
Such a “night mode” is really unsatisfactory
In contrast, there is basically no such problem on macOS. As the Mac’s ecology is more complete, various applications have long been adapted to the system’s UI specifications. Not only does the entire system look neat and uniform, it also makes system-level operations such as night mode more effective. At the same time, macOS has also added a lot of user-friendly features on this basis, such as a night mode that automatically turns on with sunrise and sunset, and a live wallpaper that automatically switches over time. While improving the appearance of the system, it also improves the humanization of the entire system.
Automatic night mode for macOS
4. Multi-terminal integration
With the increasing popularity of intelligent equipment, work coordination and synchronization have begun to be raised to a new level. As early as the birth of Win10, the concept of multi-terminal integration and information flow synchronization was proposed. The simplest example is when you are doing a certain job on one device, you can switch to another device at any time. But the vision belongs to the vision, and the reality is reality. Now that Win10 has been on the market for almost 7 years, countless functions have been cut off, and most of the rest are not related to multiple terminals. Coupled with the huge turbulence in the mobile market (tablets, mobile phones), Win10 has clearly drifted away from the original intention of the year. Even recently, it was revealed that the Timeline of the task view was about to be offline for multi-platform synchronization. All these obviously show that Microsoft has suffered setbacks in the field of multi-terminal integration. Although the system can still see a series of multi-terminal functions such as cloud clipboard, nearby sharing, OneDrive, and DLNA, it is no longer comparable to Mac in terms of operational convenience and functional integration.
Almost all of the only remaining multi-terminal integration functions in Win10 are here
Many people say that the Mac is easier to use, but in fact, many times they are talking about its multi-terminal integration function. Especially when you change your mobile phone, watch, tablet, computer to the Mac platform, its “relay”, “air drop”, “follow flight”, “air play” and other functions will greatly improve your operation effectiveness. For example, you can edit an email on your computer, and then transfer it to the tablet to continue editing. Or send photos and web pages in your mobile phone to a computer or TV for processing. Even the Mac ecosystem guarantees the interoperability of software and hardware. For example, computers use mobile phone cameras to take pictures, mobile phone text messages are sent and received by MacBook Air, and iPad is used as a computer secondary screen. The devices are all interconnected, and the difficulty of setting is reduced to a minimum. As users, we only need to choose one of the most convenient ones. This is the smart synchronization advocated by Mac.
The multi-terminal synchronization function of Mac has been very perfect
Multi-terminal simultaneous reminder
5. Disaster Recovery
When digital products will crash, disaster recovery will be involved. In Win10, disaster recovery is composed of four sub-functions: “File History”, “Restore Point”, “System Cloud Recovery”, and “Account Cloud Synchronization”. But as you can see, all the modules are located in one place, and the threshold for operation is very high. And they do not seem to meet user expectations, and lost files are still difficult to recover.
The disaster recovery system of Win10 is composed of multiple components distributed in various places
In contrast, macOS’s Time machine (time machine) appears to be much more. First of all, it is a single point of existence, whether it is system recovery or file retrieval, only one interface can be done. Secondly, the operation process is more intuitive than Win10. Open Time Machine, search for the timestamp, and then find the file you lost and click to restore. All the process is done in one go. In addition, it also takes into account part of the APP backup function. If the upgraded APP is not stable enough, as long as the time machine is turned on, you can quickly return to the old version, without worrying about the loss of user data.
Classic Time Machine (Time Machine) recovery interface
6. Intelligent search
Win10 deploys the search bar to the taskbar and the upper right corner of each window, which is convenient. But the mistake of Win10 is that its search is too limited and only supports three categories: files, programs, and system settings. At the same time, the search performance of crotch is also the point that daily users complain the most. It is slow, bulky, and unsatisfactory. It is the most evaluation of Win10 search.
Win10 search results are very limited
On the other hand, macOS, its search exists almost like a god, not only the way to call out is not limited by the use environment, but the search results also cover almost all aspects of life such as files, websites, settings, APP, geographic information, weather, navigation, stocks, etc. . It is no exaggeration to say that no matter what your needs are, Spotlight can almost meet it, making it a well-deserved search center in the Mac. In addition, Apple has also derived many more interesting new features on its voice search engine (Siri), such as automatically reminding you to take a package when you arrive near your home.
Spotlight search for macOS
7. Ease of use
If the foregoing is still a bit of a statement, then the ease of use is a bit more metaphysical. In fact, evaluating whether an operating system is easy to use does not depend on its functional design. It is whether it is easy and convenient to list these functions together. To put it simply, what you want, it will come, or everything can be thought of before you, this is the best interpretation of “easy-to-use”. In the system, there are various interlocking operation logics and functional modules with complete structures.
Standalone Control Center in macOS
Relatively speaking, Apple is more prominent in its ease of use design. On the one hand, its design is more perfect, at least one can tell at a glance that it is a company’s product. On the other hand, what we have been talking about is that Apple’s ecosystem ensures that systems and programs, software and hardware can be perfectly matched and compatible. Just like a designer, his thoughts can be free from any constraints, galloping freely. This is the biggest difference between Apple and Microsoft.
Notification Center for macOS
MacOS built-in map component
Of course, this is not to say that everything about Apple is so impeccable. In fact, there are also many unpleasant designs in macOS. For example, its “Finder” (macOS file manager) is not as easy as Windows Explorer, especially in the address bar design, it is difficult to jump directly to a directory like Win10. Secondly, its window layout is also scratching your head. Even for a long time, macOS did not support window maximization. At the same time, as the housekeeping skill of Windows, the window layout can already be arranged according to the user’s needs, but in macOS, it can only exist in half screen and half screen. In addition, it has a more important problem, that is, the software of Windows is really super rich, especially for professional tools such as finance and the Internet of Things. There is almost no version that can run under the Mac.
The smart hotspot function of macOS (automatically activates the wireless hotspot of your phone)
Write at the end
At this point in the article, it is actually very clear. The strength of Win10 is its multi-window processing and countless software resources. Especially the windows and resource managers that have been tested for decades, their comfort level can almost crush the Mac . But from another perspective, these are also the bottom-of-the-box functions of the operating system. To put it bluntly, they are the capital that Microsoft has saved for N years. As for the interactive design that users can intuitively experience, such as modern UI design, multi-terminal synchronization, and intelligent search, they obviously lag behind their opponents . Here we have no intention of evaluating what happened to Microsoft, but for an old operating system, it may be time to think carefully.
Ecology is currently the biggest bottleneck of Win10 (picture from Microsoft’s official website)
Mac focuses on ecological management and detail polishing . In this operating system, you can obviously see a lot of logical designs, such as the “airdrop” that appears at any time, the readily available “Spotlight search”, the ubiquitous “Siri”, etc. To a certain extent, it meets people’s needs for today’s intelligent equipment and information flow transmission. In addition, the detail processing is still one of the highlights of the Mac. Not only are there touchpad gestures that are comfortable to the hair, there are also a lot of cool features such as automatic night mode, dynamic wallpaper change, etc., plus that is always better than Windows A little clearer high-definition screen. All these just captured the hearts of young people!
Part of the introduction of Siri on the official website
Of course, as the two top operating system manufacturers in the world, the strength of Microsoft and Apple still cannot be underestimated. Whether it is Win10 or macOS, the operating system has always been developing in the direction of intelligence and humanity. Both Apple and Microsoft have made major mistakes in their history. Therefore, when facing some small problems, we should probably give them more patience, after all, the market is the real referee!
Apple’s multi-point storage function
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